Once again, San Antonio leads on inequality

Express-News Editorial Board

Published
12:00 am CDT, Saturday, March 19, 2016

. If you are born into a more prosperous part of the San Antonio community, you have a significantly better chance at achieving professionally and educationally. If you grow up in our more distressed neighborhoods, you are almost destined for a life in poverty. less

. If you are born into a more prosperous part of the San Antonio community, you have a significantly better chance at achieving professionally and educationally. If you grow up in our more distressed ... more

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

. If you are born into a more prosperous part of the San Antonio community, you have a significantly better chance at achieving professionally and educationally. If you grow up in our more distressed neighborhoods, you are almost destined for a life in poverty. less

. If you are born into a more prosperous part of the San Antonio community, you have a significantly better chance at achieving professionally and educationally. If you grow up in our more distressed ... more

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Once again, San Antonio leads on inequality

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Nearly 50 years ago, San Antonio’s 78207 ZIP code was featured in the stunning CBS News documentary “Hunger in America.” The film showed the stark and desperate realities of hunger and poverty on the West Side.

Generations have passed since then, and once again, 78207 has been highlighted as a desolate landscape, one defined by poverty, inequality and a sheer lack of opportunity. This time, it’s the recent “Distressed Communities Index” from the Washington D.C.-based Economic Innovation Group. The index combines a range of metrics — among them high school diplomas, housing vacancy rates, and employment and income data — to measure a community’s prosperity.

Overall, San Antonio is middle of the road for big cities when it comes to prosperity and distress. But where we stand out is in our segregation and inequality. We lead the nation when it comes to the extreme differences between our more prosperous neighborhoods and our most distressed neighborhoods. Put another way, our prosperity is not at all shared among the city’s residents. We are the least equal city in the country.

Case in point: ZIP code 78207, our poorest. The index highlights this ZIP code and compares it with 78258, on the North Side, and our most prosperous ZIP code. In 78207, nearly half of the adults don’t have a high school diploma. Nearly 60 percent of adults are not working. Unemployment is up. Income is far below the state’s median level. The poverty rate is stuck at 42 percent.

In 78258, only 2 percent of residents don’t have a high school diploma. Two-thirds of adults are working. Incomes are way above the state’s median income level. Employment is zooming. The poverty rate is 4 percent.

The implications are life-changing. If you are born in a more prosperous part of the community, you have a significantly better chance at achieving professionally and educationally. If you grow up in our more distressed neighborhoods, you are almost destined for a life in poverty. This changes, though, if you grow up poor but in a more prosperous part of the community.

“Even if you are on the lower end of the economic scale in those (more prosperous) communities, you have a shot at getting out” of poverty, Glickman said. “You are likely to be with a lot of highly educated people; there are a lot of jobs, a lot of businesses, a low poverty rate. If you grow up in kind of the center of San Antonio, in that kind of doughnut, that circle right around where the River Walk is, then those chances are much, much lower. It changes your outcome in life tremendously just on the basis of what ZIP code you are born in.”

How to break this cycle? It starts with education and improving the schools that serve our poorest communities. It continues with economic development incentives to inject investment and capital into our most distressed areas. It continues with accessible and flexible adult education programs (we’ve long harped on the region’s poor literacy rates), and supporting entrepreneurs.